Transforming Schools with Tools for Proficiency

Mini-exhibitions – a first step on the journey

When you’re planning backwards, you start with a vision of what you want students to know and be able to do. Teachers and students should have a common view of where you’d like to be at the end.

Now that we have a destination in mind, we have to think about the journey. And as the old saying goes, a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.

The early weeks of a curriculum usually start with the preliminaries; reviews of what happened in past years, and laying out the fundamentals of the current course. The theory is that focusing on the fundamentals will establish the building blocks for the rest of the year.

What can be just as helpful in these early weeks is to think about the question from last time — what should a student be able to do in May or June that the student can’t do in August or Septemberi? — and to start to envision what parts the students can do now.

If you want students to be able to have an exhibition, or a performance at the end, what about asking students to do a version of that exhibition now? Can students create a mini-version of their final exhibition in these early weeks of the year?

Many courses build towards independent projects at the end of the term. In many cases, students can have difficulty with the “independent” part — coming up with their own experiment or idea to pursue. At this stage, it can be helpful to ask students to come up with a small-scale version of the final project. The students may not have yet mastered the material that you expect them to demosntrate at the end – but they can start to get a feel for the type of brainstorming and idea generation that will be needed then.

A mini-version of the exhibition has many of the same trappings as the final exhibition. If you want students to be able to defend a point of view at the end, ask them to pair off and have a mini-debate now. If you want students to be able to transfer their math skills to other settings, ask them to start looking for situations where those skills will be useful.

Sports teams typically have pre-season scrimmages; actors will have “workshop” performances before going to fully-staged productions. The rules may not be fully enforced – actors in the workshop may still be reading from a script, but there should be enough engagement to start to feel like the real thing. Both the performers and the coaches / directors can see things in a walk-through that can be developed over time. An “early-season” exhibition can help your students and you better understand your vision of where you want to be at the end.